Just Another Day in the Office

Posted on Wed Jun 23rd, 2010 @ 10:47am by Captain Benjamin Byrne

Mission: Character Background
Location: USS Hendrix
Timeline: 2373 - 3 Months after gaining command
Tags: Hendrix, hell, battle, dominion, jem'hadar, drayton, vyers, daniel roberts, ledrah, mimbankaih

Benjamin had stood on a precipice. Behind him; the decisions of his life that had brought him to this point; all his past loves, all his old friendships, every exam he had studied for; every decision he had made in service to Starfleet. All of the decisions in his life that had led him to this point.

Ahead; a life altering decision, and a downward plunge into war.

"I'll do it," he had heard himself saying, barely before he had even had time to think.

"Good," Commodore Gates had responded. "The Hendrix is being rushed through final stages of construction now. You have one week to gather your crew, Lieutenant Commander Byrne - make that time count."

That was three months ago. As the Defiant-class warship rocketed towards her target, Benjamin's mind was focussed on that day. The day his career had become even more dangerous to his life than it had been at any point prior. The day he had asked Sarah to marry him. The day he had been given command. Command of a ship build for one thing, and one thing only. War. Battle. Slaughter.

In the days, weeks and months that had followed the Hendrix had been involved in countless battles, skirmishes, raids and engagements. Benjamin's crew had been chosen in a hurry and only from officers and crewmen available on the spot, but they had been chosen well.

Lieutenant Commander Drayton Vyers, the extremely skilled weapons officer and first officer by virtue of seniority was much better at his first job than his second. Point him at an enemy and give him the right angle and the fierce human colonist could place crippling shots without a moment's hesitation. Give him a stack of PADDs however, and he would just as soon demonstrate how to use them as dangerous projectile weapons as he would convert them into control circuits for a photon torpedo. Benjamin didn't care; paperwork was hardly very high on the wartime agenda. Vyers got the job done, and that was all that was expected of the Hendrix and her crew.

Warrant Officer Daniel Roberts; drafted straight out of the 24th Century equivalent to the merchant marine. He was an expert pilot, and could make any ship he was given dance. The Hendrix's helm controls and engines were uniquely configured to get the best out of his piloting skills. A womaniser, his faults were - in Benjamin's eyes - greatly outweighed by his skills at the helm.

Lieutenant Ledrah Mimbankaih, the ship's reptilian engineer, was a master with circuitry. Benjamin had once watched him convert a combadge, a phaser and a medical tricorder into an emergency site-to-site transporter. He never slept, and his triple-lidded eyes focused on the tiniest details of his work; everything else in the galaxy became non-existent to him. Normally a quiet man, Benjamin had learnt him to be a heavy drinker when in a high emotional state, but knew him well enough to understand that the reptilian's faster emotional processing made it best to simply leave him alone in such circumstances.

The rest of the crew were more mediocre, and Benjamin counted himself lucky to have gotten the few fantastic officers he had. For a mediocre crew however, their lives were far from ordinary. Today they were screaming at maximum warp toward a Dominion resupply depot deep within enemy territory. Such missions were highly dangerous; Starfleet expected them to have died already. There was a pool going around the ship just how many more such missions they could survive against the odds before their inevitable death by destruction. Today could very well be the day that they die.

Today was just another day in the office.

"Report." Benjamin's voice was low and gruff. Regardless, everyone on the small bridge heard him clearly.

"Entering scanning range in fifteen minutes," Roberts responded. "We will be within visual range sixteen seconds after that. Twenty four seconds after is our ETA." The had managed to mask their approach along the path of a comet which had somehow found its way into subspace. It was a testament to Roberts' skill that it hadn't destroyed them.

"Battle stations. Visual count down on the view screen." Benjamin ignored the lights as they took on a red hue. The crew were almost permanently at battle stations. Benjamin's call was only to inform them it was nearly time. The bridge crew all watched as the red digits of the view screen's timer ticked slowly down towards zero. Calls began flowing through the air of the bridge as it reached 00:30 and the Dominion forces finally detected them. Time seemed to slow as the timer got closer to zero hour. The next half an hour was a blur.

The Hendrix dropped out of warp, and thirty second later had fourteen ships' worth of weapons locked onto her. But it was too slow. She was already powering towards the out surface of the asteroid-based resupply facility, her powerful weapons systems ripping a hold in the rocky shell for the ship to dive into mere milliseconds before the facility's shield envelope closed around it. The ship moved with intricate precision, Roberts focusing on the Intelligence reports more than the ship's surroundings, as Vyers cleared any potential obstacles. Less than a minute had passed by the time the weapons systems found refined metal, and the Hendrix burst through the corridors and cargo bays of the facility, heading straight for the power core.

The core erupted almost immediately after the first of the three quantum torpedo hits, and the flames followed the Federation attack ship as she followed the path of least resistance out through the station's disintegrating bulkheads and beyond the failing shields of the base.

Into hell itself.

Hell was a familiar place to the Hendrix crew. Roberts took the ship dangerously close to each of the larger vessels whilst Vyers launched volley after volley at their hulls and Ledrah gave the engines, shields and weapons all the juice they could take. The ship played cat and mouse with the smaller Jem'Hadar ships until they crashed into the hulls of their brethren at close proximity. Amid all the chaos, the Hendrix would jump to warp to escape, fleeting to strong, Federation-held territory for safety.

Damage reports came in as soon as they were in warp. They had sustained heavy damage and ablative armour was depleted. They had lost three crewmembers to internal explosions. The facility was in ruins, the Dominion doubtlessly furious, and three Jem'Hadar ships were in pursuit, but wouldn't catch them before they reached safe territory. The Hendrix's mission while not part of a concerted fleet battle was to get the Dominion commanders so furious as to make brash and foolish decisions. It was a bonus if they survived to try again in this brutal war. Benjamin would never tell Sarah how dangerous his missions were even if he could through all the classification and red tape.

It was just another day at the office on-board the USS Hendrix.

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